NCJ Number
79539
Date Published
Unknown
Length
0 pages
Annotation
Pretrial investigators are taught methods of improving interviews with arrestees and verification sources to produce more useful reports.
Abstract
A dramatization of an interview with an arrestee and a verification interview with the arrestee's brother show wrong approaches to collecting information for the pretrial report. Next, the pretrial investigators go through the same arrestee interview using improved techniques. Critical to the successful interview are getting all names and aliases of the arrestee, obtaining specific years of residency in the area, and eliciting detailed, specific answers to questions. To do this, the investigators use open-ended and followup questions, as well as explanations of the rationale for the question. The investigators also pursue all inconsistencies in the answers and are alert for nonverbal cues. During the interview, the investigator gathers as many references as possible from the interviewee, so as to facilitate the judge's ability to make a correct determination of the arrestee's pretrial disposition.